No one is so good that forgiveness isn't needed.
No one is so evil that forgiveness isn't offered.

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Funny? Shameful? OR Stupid?

1) Arizona Atheist: ‘Red light cameras are a bad idea for two reasons - One, the police are using them for surveillance. Two, when people slam on their brakes so as not to be caught running a red light, others from behind are crashing into them.’

I'm not kidding. That's what he wrote.

A.A. doesn’t blame the accidents on the second driver tailgating with the intention of running the red light along with the guy in front of him (hence the need for the cameras in the first place).

A.A. lays the blame for accidents on the cameras themselves. ==========

2) Random atheist: This guy says that speed traps create dangerous driving conditions. As this atheist described it - “The guy in front of me had to slow down from 120kms to 50kms in a very short distance to avoid getting a ticket. I almost crashed into him.”

R.A. is following a guy @ 70kms over the speed limit and he blames the “Peace Officers” (as he put in quotation - signifying sarcasm) for almost “causing” an accident.===============

3) In a post “Endless Possibilities,” I talked about human trafficking and the sex trade. I described this as a tragedy that is supported and endorsed by those who adhere to situational ethics and selective morality; a world-view in fact that cannot bring itself with any conviction, coherence or logic to say that ANYTHING is right or wrong. Atheism drives a philosophy, under the banner of pseudo tolerance, which states, “You don’t judge me and I won’t judge you.”

Nothing! Absolutely nothing in defence, unless you count peurile jokes and strawman changing of the subject.=============

4) Atheists on one of my posts are telling me that social Darwinism isn’t really Darwinism.

I ask, “What is that wrong with Social Darwinism; eugenics etc.? It wouldn't be hard to make a case, in a world of limited resources, that the weak and defective simply should not take away from the genetically strong. If it isn't wrong for other animals, why is it wrong for human animals?”

No one. Not one atheist has an answered - On atheism there ISN’T an answer as to why this action is right and that action is wrong. ================

I’ll let you decide whether these vignettes present atheism as funny, shameful, stupid or a combination of all three - All I know is, they present attitudes that sure are common to those holding to atheism.

And when I commented on how blatantly bigotous and mean this comment was, instead of makarios correcting the lovely yolanda, he instead criticized me for criticizing her bigotry. Which tells me that either makarios agrees with this non-sense (and I assumed better of him) or that Makarios accepts bigotry as long as the bigot believes in god.

sad.

We could search the annals of stupid quotes generated by theists and come up rich with material. We know of one recently by good ol' Pat Robertson. Dull of mind, Slow of thought? You can criticize the atheist's lack of words when it comes to materializing evolutionary explanations for objective moral truths, but who really has the high ground when you got these religious nuts blaming homosexuals and atheists for natural disasters.

By the way, religious morals are just as situational as any others. Why else would there be so many moral interpretations of a single book? I don't see Christians behaving in unanimous harmony and synchronization with respect to any theoretically ideal matrix of moral truth. As I said before, If Christians were so morally advanced, why is it that we need human rights movements to teach us that women are equal, or black people, or gays, and maybe someday animals and atheists? Why is it that god didn't program us with a more updated moral code from the get-go? why is it that we get periodic updates of morals that are supposedly inflexible, unchanging, and written in stone? Seems kinda weird for something so objective and eternal. In fact, when looked upon closer, Christian morals seem about as eternal and objective as atheist morals. Christian morals, when observed unbiased, look about as stable and non-situational as the Buddhists', Hindus, or agnostics. Atheists hear this moral objection from the theist all the time, and yet, we don't see blood sucking atheists anywhere. Theists keep yapping about how eternal and objective their moral code seems to be, and yet upon contrasting themselves to more secular societies, we don't find all the compromised moral integrity we hear about so frequently. In fact we see the opposite of what the theists keep telling us we should see.

1. I'm on your side, Mak. If it were up to me, every public location which could afford it should be video taped at all times. I don't understand why this is an invasion of anything, least of all privacy. If one wants privacy, stay in your home. The only harm is that people will be caught for crimes more often, and maybe people will learn that a little leniancy and forgiveness are actually necessary for society to work properly.

2. Same thing.

3. We all agree human trafficking is wrong, just as you and I agree that speeding is wrong. But making cars illegal isn't the answer. Human trafficking is an issue apart from prostitution, as legal brothels in Nevada and Holland have clearly shown over the years. Nothing in anything remotely resembling "atheist philosophy" supports the victimization of others for profit.

4. "Social Darwinism" is to Darwinism as Mormons are to Christians. Yes, those who hold it as true say it is that thing, but everyone outside of that view it as seperate (and incorrect).

Social Darwinism literally states that, by process of elimination, one ethnicity must be "superior" to all others. This is completely non-Darwinian, as evolution has nothing to do with superiority as a test of survival, only adaptability. Now, one might then just say, "Well one ethnicity must be the most adapted," but to what? The conditions of the environment are always changing, and what is a superior adaptation now may be a hindrance later. And in actual fact, diversity provides a far more biologically robust population and one with the best chance of survival.

"Wherever progress is to ensue, deviating natures are of greatest importance. Every progress of the whole must be preceded by a partial weakening. The strongest natures retain the type, the weaker ones help to advance it. Something similar also happens in the individual. There is rarely a degeneration, a truncation, or even a vice or any physical or moral loss without an advantage somewhere else. In a warlike and restless clan, for example, the sicklier man may have occasion to be alone, and may therefore become quieter and wiser; the one-eyed man will have one eye the stronger; the blind man will see deeper inwardly, and certainly hear better. To this extent, the famous theory of the survival of the fittest does not seem to me to be the only viewpoint from which to explain the progress of strengthening of a man or of a race."

Being that you (Makarios) quote Nietzsche so often, I would have thought you might have read that one. Darwinism is wrongly coupled with morality too often. Even if survival was of the fittest, and even if we knew exactly what that meant relative to human biology in an exact sense of understanding, we as human beings can reject Darwinism in a social context just as we use contraception to reject our Darwinian impulse of procreation with result. We can accept Natural selection and reject a social selection in the same breath, because our social output is generated by a distinctively and uniquely powerful brain that renders abstractions that allow predictive abilities as well as grant us valuable functions like empathy and care. Care is observed elsewhere in the animal kingdom, and of course by those animals whose brains have high thresholds of function relative to the remainder of the animal kingdom. Unfortunately we have to grade on a curve here, but perhaps the fact that there is a curve is revealing. Higher thresholds of consciousness seem to grant abilities of compassion and the like. As far as I know, the reasons for this are blurry and not yet understood, but that doesn't negate the fact that natural reasons exists. This is okay, as I think, time favors the atheist on this subject.

Personally, if I may indulge my imagination, I would dare suggest that consciousness at an adequate threshold radically alters our behavior from Darwinian mechanics at the social level as drastic differences in mental ability conduct them relatively astray from the instinctive mechanisms that may no longer be necessary for our survival. The fact that we posses the ability to discuss this should be an important clue about our conscious tenancies to ignore behaviors bound by Darwinian selection as we see it.

The strange thing is that compassion is thought to be god-like. Theists declare that when left alone, people have no compassion, as there is no reason for it. But when you think about it, why should god have a reason for it? After all compassion seems to work only when decisions other than compassionate ones exist, compassion is relative to the lack-of. What use is compassion to someone who doesn't necessitate a virtue to remind themselves that a morally superior course of action should be preferred? There is no use for compassion if your actions already reflect the best possible outcome. So why would god need compassion? On the other hand, compassion is very useful for your survival and the survival of others, in a human sense. The lack of compassion hurts others as well as creates enemies whom may compromise your existence. Compassion reminds humans that multiple choices exist, and some choices should be preferred over others to make our experience a better one, sounds human, not godly. When we say God is compassionate, we suggest that god is compassionate relative to something, as if there existed other gods, to whom we would to him, compare.

Hey man, thanks for linking to my blog so people can actually see the studies I cited proving my case?! (sarcasm)

In case you forgot what I said last time you looked at the post you're referring to, I cited several studies backing up what I said. But apparently that interfered with your incoherent little rant about red-light cameras. Many studies have shown that they do cause accidents. Here are two: Public Health Researchers Take A Closer Look at Cameras and here is a study from the government itself saying these cameras aren't doing anything to reduce accidents! FHWA-HRT-05-048. According to this government study, the cameras only reduce right-angle crashes by as much as 40%, while the rear end collisions have gone up as much as 38%. After the cameras were put in place they found a reduction of 24.6% right angle crashes, with 1,163 crashes, and 296 "definite injuries." While the rear end collisions went up to 2,896 with 163 "definite injuries."

In total, after the cameras were put in place, there was only a 24.6% drop in right angle crashes, and a 15.7% decrease in injuries. On the other hand, there was a 14.9 increase of rear end collisions, with a 24.0% increase of "definite injuries."

These figures sure don't look very promising, with not even a reduction of half of the right-angle crashes. The red light camera proponents tout their safety benefits but it's obvious they cause about as many crashes as they stop.